Good Morning, Illini Nation: Keeping college basketball relevant early in the season

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Sign up for our daily basketball newsletter here Welcome to Good Morning, Illini Nation, your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey.

Hell offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwoods team and college basketball at large: High profile nonconference games dot Big Ten schedules across the league.

Illinois has notable showdowns with Alabama and Arkansas among four SEC opponents on the 2024-25 slate.

Purdue will play three SEC teams.

Michigan State has the Champions Classic against Kansas.

And both Oregon and Rutgers will play in the Players Era Festival a $2 million NIL-drive event in Las Vegas.

The Big Ten has lost, of course, both the Gavitt Tipoff Games after that contract ran out and the Big Ten/ACC Challenge once ESPN no longer had a media rights deal with the former.

Exploring new partnerships in that vein is something Petitti said the Big Ten was exploring.

I think theres an appetite to do more things to drive interest in regular season college basketball, Petitti continued.

If we can do things that create that interest early, that would be great.

I think were open, in the Big Ten, to talking about all different kinds of formats whether its working with other conferences or doing things inside of our league.

Youve seen in-season tournaments in the NBA.

Theres just ideas, and we should be creative about this and try to figure out how we generate more interest.

Theres a lot of nonconference events that are staged by others.

I think we believe that we can do more and more of that ourselves and find ways to bring our teams together with others and play meaningful games throughout the season.

The first games of the college basketball season, of course, dont happen in a vacuum.

An early November start means going head-to-head with the NFL, NBA and college football.

Theres opportunities during the week, Petitti said.

Theres days when theres no football being played.

I think a lot of its the creativity of how you schedule and where you put these events to maximize interest and maximize attendance.

I think theres an opportunity there.

Look, I think weve seen when you bring teams together and you create events that matter people find it.

We do a lot of it now Im not suggesting that we dont but I think we can do a lot more of it..

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